Telecommunications companies that provide data communication services may operate networks that include routers scattered throughout the world or a geographic region. When a device sends a network packet on such a network, one or more of the routers in the network may direct the network packet along a physical path through the network. In this way, the network packet eventually arrives at an intended destination device.
Routers select how to direct network packets based on one or more routing metrics. For example, a router may use network congestion as a routing metric. In this example, the router may determine that a particular network packet should be directed along a particular path based on the relative network congestion of potential paths. In a second example, a router may use the number of hops in a route as a routing metric. In this second example, the router may determine that a particular network packet should be directed along a particular path based on the relative number of hops along paths between the router and the destination device.